Showing posts with label categorising. Show all posts
Showing posts with label categorising. Show all posts

Friday, June 22, 2007

Essential German Grammar (good book) by Guy Stern and Everett F. Bleiler has this to say about using 'sein' as an auxiliary verb:

Only three categories of German verbs use sein as an auxiliary. These are:
  1. Verbs involving a change of position that cannot take a direct object.
    [Table showing 'kommen', 'gehen', 'fahren', 'fallen', 'steigen', and 'folgen'.]

  2. Verbs involving a change of condition that cannot take an object.
    [Table showing 'wachsen', 'sterben', and 'verschwinden'.]

  3. Miscellaneous verbs.

Yeah, and there are only three types of words: verbs, nouns, and all the other types.

If one of your categories is just a catch-all, your classification system is incomplete. There's only one category of X that Y: 'all X that Y'.

(I can't think of any sensible labels[==categories] for this post.)